Why was the head of Leelanau County’s Building Inspections Department fired on June 4?

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on June 11 by the Leelanau Enterprise led to the release last week of roughly half a ream of paperwork from county personnel files – but few answers.

Robert VanDyke

What is clear is that department head Robert VanDyke was fired just two working days after he rescinded occupancy permits for every unit at the BayView condominium development in the Village of Suttons Bay, citing potential health and safety concerns related to the installation of furnace and water heater exhaust vents.

One day after VanDyke was fired, county administrator David Gill reversed VanDyke’s decision to rescind the occupancy permits at BayView and declared that no code violations or safety issues existed at the development.

Gill and other county officials have steadfastly denied that VanDyke’s firing was related primarily to his actions regarding BayView.

When VanDyke applied for unemployment benefits immediately after his firing, the state Unemployment Insurance Agency asked Gill to explain why VanDyke was fired. Gill’s handwritten response, contained in VanDyke’s personnel file, was “see attached letter.”

A June 4 letter from Gill to VanDyke stated: “As you are an ‘at-will’ employee, whose employment may be terminated for any or no reason, I need not provide any explanation for my decision. However, the fact that you have lost control of managing your department was considered in the decision to terminate your employment.”

However, before June 4, VanDyke’s personnel file contained scant evidence that anyone was ever concerned that VanDyke had “lost control” of his department.

The harshest criticism of VanDyke in his personnel file is a sharply worded December 2005 memo from Gill criticizing VanDyke for the Inspections Department’s failure to take its turn in picking up and delivering county mail from the post office for other county departments.

Documents in VanDyke’s personnel record include at least a dozen “thank you” letters and “letters of support” from property owners and contractors who wrote that they were pleased with VanDyke and what his department had done for them.

Last year, however – apparently in response to concerns voiced in phone calls from contractors and others – the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners revived its long-dormant Inspections Department Subcommittee and held a series of meetings with VanDyke, other county officials, and members of the public interested in Inspections Department activities.

Minutes of those meetings do not contain any explicit criticism of VanDyke’s management skills – but do contain suggestions from commissioners and others on how the department could be run more efficiently. For example, at the subcommittee’s urging – and with its blessing – VanDyke obtained the services of an additional “plan reviewer” in his department and began accepting credit card payments from contractors for building permits.

According to minutes of an October 2006 meeting, VanDyke told commissioners that he was generally satisfied with his how his staff was performing but had concerns about his two mechanical and plumbing inspectors, both Teamsters Union members. In a November 2006 meeting, VanDyke was informed by the committee chairman, District No. 2 commissioner Will Bunek, that he could expect no help from a county-hired lawyer in dealing with ongoing disciplinary issues involving the employees.

In 1998, the county was successfully sued by an employee that VanDyke had fired.

The two employees that VanDyke had expressed concern about in the October 2006 subcommittee meeting were mechanical/plumbing inspectors Scott Earl and Steve Schwarz. The Enterprise also requested and received information from the two employees’ personnel files under the FOIA.

The files for Earl and Schwartz each contain more than a dozen documents indicating a history of reprimands and complaints against them. In 2004, Earl was suspended from his job for three days for “unacceptable work.” Schwarz, a Teamsters Union steward, was suspended twice, in 2005 and 2006, for “misconduct.” Both had formally challenged VanDyke’s allegations and the disciplinary actions he took against them.

Neither Earl nor Schwarz returned a phone call from a newspaper reporter seeking their views and comments on this story.

Both Earl and Schwarz were named in a lawsuit filed in 2004 by owners of The Homestead resort in Glen Arbor Township. The suit alleges that Earl and Schwarz were “grossly negligent” in approving the installation of 17 improperly vented gas fireplaces at the resort in 2003. The case is pending in Circuit Court.

Earl and Schwarz were also both responsible for inspecting heating and furnace exhaust vents at the BayView condominiums in Suttons Bay last year.

In April, VanDyke ordered that an independent engineer inspect the vent installations after the owner of a BayView condo unit demanded her money back from the developer.

The condo owner’s own engineer had convinced a real estate arbitrator that the unit had serious defects in violation of Michigan building codes. A Circuit Court judge had accepted the arbitrator’s ruling and, this month, ordered the BayView developer to pay back all of the $729,000 the condo owner paid for her unit.

Results of the independent engineer’s report commissioned by VanDyke indicated there were “deficiencies” in how exhaust vents were installed throughout the BayView development.

“These deficiencies can affect the health and safety of the occupants of these structure,” VanDyke wrote in a May 23 letter to the subcontractor who had installed the vents. In the letter, subsequently approved by a county attorney and released on May 31, VanDyke declared that all previously issued Certificates of Occupancy at BayView were suspended and that no new occupancy permits would be issued until all health and safety concerns were met.

However, a May 31 report prepared by an engineer hired by the BayView developer and the subcontractor who installed the vents at BayView – Bayshore Engineering of Traverse City – refuted the findings of the previous engineer’s report and concluded that “no life safety concerns are warranted.”

On June 5 – the day after VanDyke was fired – county administrator and interim Inspections Department head Gill reported that he had held a meeting “with our mechanical and building inspectors and the involved contractors at (BayView). Our inspectors are satisfied that no code violations exist and a signed, stamped engineering report drafted by Bayshore Engineering of Traverse City certifies that ‘no life safety issues remain.”

Based on the engineering report from Bayshore – as well as input from the contractors who hired the engineering firm and the mechanical inspectors who previously approved the vent installations at BayView – Gill declared that VanDyke’s decision to suspend occupancy permits at BayView was rescinded and that final inspections of remaining units would proceed.